It’s been almost threee weeks now, and the Egypt-Algeria saga still leads the list of hot topics. For some people, it is the list.

The funny SMS Eid greetings that snidely targeted Algeria, directly and subtly, didn’t diffuse the anger. The messages seemed to express and stoke the furry rather than being another mechanism of dealing with concerns with humor. Black comedy or cynicism to be accurate. People were laughing at rhymed messages that ended with “يخرب بيت أم الجزائر” (literally to destroy Algeria), but only few were ready to discuss the issue rationally.

The news that Mohamed ElBaradie could be an option in the next presidential elections was still overshadowed by aftermath of the Egypt-Algeria games. The minaret ban in Switzerland did get some attention, but that too was limited. (I’m a bit surprised that Algeria wasn’t implicated in the outcome of the infamous vote, though).

Although, I heard that Arabic press got orders to water down on the coverage of the issue, the damage has been done, and false and speculative news still appear as facts.

Just before the Eid, journalist Amr Khafaga appeared on state-TV’s El-Beit Beitak with other journalists to assess media coverage of the skirmishes after the game in Sudan. Unfortunately, I don’t have the link. But it was surprising to see criticism of the way events were blown out of proportion, how agitation reigned over factual reporting, and the inappropriate language used on state TV, which was also blamed for it unprofessional coverage.

Although I would like to assume that this indicates a positive change in the government’s approach to the issue — especially with officials on both sides toning down their fiery statements — false news are obviously here to stay.

The latest example was unfortunately in Al-Masry Al-Youm, sports section. On Friday, the Arabic-language paper said that Qatar pulled its team from the women’s volleyball tournament currently hosted by Ahly, to declare its support to Algeria. The story quotes an Ahly board member who says that this is ‘probably’ the reason.

This piece of ‘news’ is trying to hit two birds with one stone: keep stoking the Algeria furry while using the incident to vilify Qatar at the same time (in your face Jazeera).

But in doing so, the journalist chose to ignore many known facts. First, as I heard, many clubs (over 10, if not 20) had pulled out from this tournament for various reasons, mainly finances. Usually women teams are sacrificed when their clubs are faced with limited resources/finances. The parallel men’s team takes priority. Second, the head of the Qatari volleyball federation was in Cairo all this week. It sounds a bit odd that Qatar (as a country) would pull out from a tournament in objection to something, but its official sports representative would attend.

The rise of the sports media

This piece of news and the entire media coverage of the Egypt-Algeria saga is the manifestation of the rise of the sports media. Let’s face it, sports, with all the corruption it’s known for, remains to be the closest thing we have to democracy. It’s something everyone relates to, can participate and engage in, and its governing bodies are regularly elected. It was only natural that with the advent of independent satellite stations and publications that sport would take the premium attention. As one editor of an Arabic-language daily said, the sports section (always printed in color) is the moneymaker, the section for which many people buy newspapers.

We’ve always had the “Sport & Youth” radio station, but new TV networks dedicated entire channels or considerable airtime to sport. You can even find coverage of the second-level football league. In turn, this pushed state TV to do the same. The competition – sometimes healthy, sometimes sickening – has demanded that these stations look for knowledgeable presenters that can also attract viewers to the station. Thus, instead of trained journalists, retired athletes took over.

The unprofessional coverage of events has been evident over the past couple of years. It was put under the spotlight during the coverage of the violence that followed the game in Sudan. It’s not like the supposedly trained journalists did any better, but the increase of this type of media people has definitely contributed in blowing this incident out of proportion and of (un)intentionally agitating the viewers.

For more critical and analytical coverage, these are my favorite:
1. Jack Shenker analysis in the Guardian: More to Egypt riots than football.
2. Nawara Negm’s sarcastic review of Alaa Mubarak’s phone interjections كلمة ابن الرئيس المؤمن علاء مبارك . Actually just read every thing on this blog.
3. And of course Mona El Shazly’s critical review of the government’s the media’s performance before, during and after the game.

In the aftermath of the Egypt-Algeria game in Sudan, and as we frantically were gathering information and contacts for our coverage, we also had to sit down and discuss the flood of information – or the lack of it at times.

Every TV show on Wednesday night had covered the ordeal of those who traveled to Sudan. Phone calls were pouring in from those frightened by attacks by Algerian fans and those who can’t get to or inside the airport. People we spoke to for our stories weren’t short of their own horror stories.

But it seemed to be only in Egypt’s mind, because on the other hand, the news agencies either ignored it or referred to it as minor incidents. By Friday morning I started doubting myself. There were two parallel worlds, one where people were traumatized and another where nothing of significance happened.

Pictures were only available of the game, but no photos on the wires of what happened afterwards. But as my friend — a person I trust who gave me a first hand account of his experience there — told me, “Our first reaction when attacked was not to take pictures, but to protect ourselves.”

He did send me photos of the shattered windows of their bus, which we ran in the paper.

But this led to some important questions: How accurate are the reports we are getting? How can we validate them? It’s not possible that thousands have agreed on one story, but are they exaggerating? Are we falling in the trap of sensationalization? Are we getting too caught up in the details that we are failing to see the bigger picture?

Seeing the media frenzy that followed was also worrying. The state-run official satellite station, El-Masreya, ran footage of the Thursday night demonstration. (For those of you who don’t know, for state TV and media, demos don’t happen). Many TV shows crossed the line (not a fine line) that separates coverage to outward agitation of the masses, some even calling for targeting Algerians in Egypt. It’s the same type of irresponsible media that fueled the masses in Algeria with false reports. (Mainly the death of Algerians during the game in Egypt, which the Algerian government denied. The denial didn’t find a place in some newspapers that had confirmed these alleged deaths.)

Alaa Mubarak speaking on TV (a rare occurrence for the media shy son), the initial tolerance for the protests near the Algerian embassy, and the liberty in which media was allowed to report on and fuel the anger were factors to consider.

After the initial story that ran in the Friday edition, we ran more stories the following day: more eyewitnesses’ accounts, the diplomatic relations between Egypt and Algeria, a story about Alaa Mubarak speaking on TV, and of course a story about the demonstrations that took place on Thursday and Friday.

But in doing so, we tried to be careful with the wording. Not sensational but not subdued either. Report it as is. Focus on the facts. I hope we didn’t mess up or miss a word here or there.

Objectivity, the first lesson any journalist learns, can sometimes seem like an elusive goal.

My take on the frenzy: When did Alaa become the hero?

After sending the paper to print and during the two days I took off, I had the chance to talk to more people, not about their experience in Sudan but about their reactions here in Cairo to the whole thing.

The most worrying realization was that many felt more humiliated by this incident than the numerous tragedies that have marred our recent history: from train accidents to the death of over 1,000 people over the course of few hours when their ferry sank in the Red Sea (and the subsequent escape of its owner).

I’m not trying to belittle the incident or what people have went through last week in Sudan. I don’t have the slightest doubt that this happened. Although it’s difficult to prove with material evidence, since people were running away from the attacks rather than clashing with the attackers, it’s still traumatizing for any person to be chased down the streets of a foreign city (or their hometown for that matter). Whether the Algerian government is complicit in this by intentionally allowing more violent fans to travel needs to be probed. Justice needs to be served. The failure of the Sudanese security to enforce order and protect its Egyptian visitors needs to addressed as well. We also need to revise the official response after the bus carrying the Algerian players was pelted by stones on their way from the airport.

But let’s put it all in perspective.

This incident is given more space, in state and private media, than other more tragic ones. Without scientific research, it’s easy to notice the difference between portraying the ordeal of the fans who returned and the ordeal of the families that spent nights (stress the ‘s’ here) in Red Sea towns waiting for news on the fate of their loved ones after the ferry sank in 2006. No masses were agitated on the scale we saw over the weekend. No actors or singers cried on live TV from the shock of it. No one felt humiliated when the case was referred to misdemeanor court or that the owner of the ferry was tried in absentia, because he left the country. Not in disguise but like any respectable citizen traveling abroad with the seal of government consent on his forehead.

Remember no people were chased down streets or had their buses pelted with stones then; they were merely left to die in freezing water and their corpses were left floating in open water, all 1,035 of them.

It’s only when the anger would be directed to an outside enemy is it allowed to be fueled and to mushroom. And not any enemy. People were beaten in Tahrir in March 2003 when they tried to march to the US embassy to protest the Iraq War. They were described as barbaric and accused of vandalism. Last week, the media and the ministry of interior (which usually takes days to issue a statement, that if they decided to acknowledge the existence of an incident) hailed the protest at the Algerian embassy that left a lot of shattered glass in Zamalek as “civilized.”

This has led many to the verge of hysteria and some willingly fell off that cliff. The hysteria I’m talking about here can be summarized in the willingness of many to attack any person just because he or she is Algerian. Someone, usually sane, told me over the weekend he would randomly attack any Algerian he sees in Cairo. What about XX, an Algerian friend? What if the man you are attacking has just spoken in your favor? What if it’s a woman? An old woman?

This hysteria won’t only have violent irreversible repercussions but has the ability of distracting people from the right ways to seek justice and also other important issues on the local front.

The idea that Egyptians are allowing many to cash in on their ordeal is equally worrying. Aside from celebrities, Alaa Mubarak’s phone interjection on TV has left me speechless.

Suddenly, the business-savvy son of the president who’s been in power for 28 years has become the hero. He’s angry, he wants to avenge the masses and like the rest of the Egyptians he feels humiliated. Suddenly, he is speaking against Egypt’s policy of political posturing, a policy that thrived during his father’s reign (except for selected enemies).

Alaa’s popularity is off the chart. The past 28 years and his other ‘business interjections’ were instantly forgiven and forever forgotten.

Sorry, but I draw the line here: When Alaa rises in popularity as hysteria reigns.

“Please correct news regarding Mohamed Talaat, national team player. The writing on the t-shirt isn’t remotely related to Hebrew. It’s Japanese, written in Katakana letters. The ad is for the Coca Cola Company.”

Talaat in the infamous Coca Cola ad. -From Gemyhoood's twitpic.

I received this email on Thursday morning from Mr. Essam Galal, who identified himself as a Japanese-language translator and tour guide. He also works for Japanese TV in Cairo. Sent to a number of journalists, the email is a response to the media campaign that targeted Talaat, following Egypt’s loss to Costa Rica on Tuesday in the U20 World Cup round of 16.

Many blogs, forums, and online commentators have already echoed what Galal said: The writing isn’t in Hebrew, ignoramuses; it’s Japanese.

Yet the calls seem to be falling on deaf ears. Obviously, the war is on.

The ad has been running since before the tournament started, but it was only after Egypt lost to Costa Rica, crashing out of the World Cup, that the campaign to vilify Talaat found a place in the media.

We lost on Oct. 6, and on Oct. 7, Al-Haya Al-Youm was already running a segment on it.

Ahh, we lost because Talaat was wearing a t-shirt with Hebrew inscriptions. Of course, what else? Silly me, I thought we lost because of grave defensive errors and the inability of the technical staff to shuffle the formation in accordance with the Costa Rican team’s.

Like what happened after the senior team lost to the United States in the Confederations Cup, accusing them of bringing prostitutes to their hotel rooms on the night before the game (based on a tabloid report), now the junior team must face the same fate.

Like the senior team in June in South Africa, the U20 team played really bad on Oct. 6 in Cairo. I was at the stadium and it was frustrating to see them display such below-par performance.

But that’s it. Nothing more.

They lost because they played bad, not because they are degenerate or evil. Not because they are spies, sellouts, or whatever this campaign is trying to suggest.

There is no need to follow the trend of finding a non-football related issue to vilify the players through. There’s a lot to criticize in their performance on the pitch, and focusing on that would help them get on the right track.

But crying like five-year-olds who didn’t get their ice cream doesn’t help anyone. Fans at the stadium expressed their frustration and disappointment by throwing water bottles on the pitch after the game, a negative point in assessing Egypt’s organization of the tournament. So not only did our national team lose, but Egypt as an organizer could be in trouble as well.

The same destructive attitude is what is fueling the campaign against Talaat. It’s a reminder of what Amr Adib did with the senior team, holding a printout of a South African tabloid as proof of how the players’ “debauchery” was responsible for Egypt’s loss. The tabloid ran an apology to the Egyptian team later on and Adib half-heartedly followed suit.